Six Kids and a Full Time Job

Wow! The New Yorker and Cass R. Sunstein of the White House Picked Up on My Meme from 2005!

2009-11-02T15:40:00.003+02:00

The internet/twitter is abuzz this week about an article in the New Yorker suggesting that the internet and RSS breeds narrow-mindedness.

A legal scholar Cass R. Sunstein, according to the New Yorker (full article here), now head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and prolific author has proffered the following:

But, in Sunstein’s view, the Web has a feature that is even more salient: at the same time that it makes more news available, it also makes more news avoidable.
“The most striking power provided by emerging technologies,” he has written, is the “growing power of consumers to ‘filter’ what they see.” Many of the most popular Web sites are still those belonging to the major news channels and papers—CNN, the BBC, the New York Times. Increasingly, though, people are getting information from these sites in a customized form, by subscribing to e-mails and RSS feeds on their favorite topics and skipping subjects they find less congenial. Meanwhile, some of the fastest-growing sites are those which explicitly cater to their users’ ideologies. Left-leaning readers know, for example, that if they go to the Huffington Post or to AlterNet they will find stories that support their view of the world. Right-leaning readers know to go to the Drudge Report or to Newsmax to find stories that fit their preconceptions.
And what holds true for the news sites is even more so for the blogosphere, where it’s possible to spend hours surfing without ever entering new waters. Conservative blogs like Power Line almost always direct visitors to other conservative blogs, like No Left Turns, while liberal blogs like Daily Kos guide them to others that are also liberal, like Firedoglake. A study of the twenty most-visited blogs in each camp in the months leading up to the 2004 Presidential election found that more than eighty-five per cent of their links were to other blogs with similar politics. When the study’s authors charted the links in graphic form, they came up with a picture of non-interaction—a dense scribble on one side, a dense scribble on the other, and only the thinnest strands connecting the two. In 2006, Sunstein performed his own study of fifty political sites. He found that more than four-fifths linked to like-minded sites but only a third linked to sites with an opposing viewpoint. Moreover, many of the links to the opposing side’s sites were offered only to illustrate how “dangerous, dumb, or contemptible the views of the adversary really are.”
“I do not mean to deny the obvious fact that any system that allows for freedom of choice will create some balkanization of opinion,” Sunstein writes, in “Republic.com 2.0.” “Long before the advent of the Internet, and in an era of a handful of television stations, people made self-conscious choices among newspapers and radio stations.” But, he argues, Web culture takes choice to a new level.

Here is an excerpt of my post from 2005 entitled "Will RSS Undermine Tolerance?"

When I attended college, I purposely took a liberal arts route. Although, I knew I would end up in some form of business, I did not want to major in economics or go to the undergraduate business school. My rationale was that college was a place to expand my horizons, see and hear other points of view and learn about different and interesting topics.

As people leave university, settle into jobs, communities and opinions, we interact with other viewpoints in the workplace and by reading newspapers. While I do not believe that newspapers are objective despite their claims (every news editor and writer has his own biases which seep in), newspapers still include a reasonably wide variety of materials and some variety of opinions.

Today, more people are getting their news and opinions online. Initially, this came from online newspapers that were reaosnably similar to the written newspapers and varied in thier content. Now people are interacting more with blogs. Going and finding blogs that are interesting still forced one into contact with information and opinions that are not their own nor in thier comfort zone. This, one would hope, still expands horizons and stretches the mind.

However, RSS takes this one step further, a step that I fear may lead to self-reinforcing narrow-mindedness. I subscribe to RSS feeds, lots of them. They are very helpful for busy people. But as busy people (in an increasingly utilitarian world), we only subscribe to a feed/blog that really interests us or matches our current interests and opinions. These myopic intellectual interactions may lead people to become further entrenched in thier beliefs, having found sufficient like-minded content to keep them busy and close them off from other opinions. I am worried that personalized subscription will lead to even less tolerance than we have today.

Too bad I do not write books like Sunstein, but maybe I can get a job in the Israeli Prime Minister's office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Oh, I forgot, we don't have one.

Job Opportunity: Seeking Alpha is Looking For An Editorial Administrator in Israel

2009-10-28T11:54:00.000+02:00

Seeking Alpha, a leading stock market website based in Israel and New York, would like to hire an Editorial Administrator for our Hertzelia office. The position is fulltime and reports to the Editor in Chief.

Requirements:

- Proven experience or strong aptitude for a demanding administrative role
- Extremely detail oriented
- Ability to handle multiple ongoing tasks in an efficient manner
- Native English speaker
- Strong computer skills: internet, word processing and some database experience preferred
- Outstanding communication skills - written and verbal; ability to serve as an effective liason between various teams
- Self-starter who doesn't require or desire constant supervision
- University degree from English-speaking nation preferred

If you're interested in the position, please send an email to contentjobs@seekingalpha.com <mailto:xxxx@seekingalpha.com> with the following:

- A brief description of your prior experience in administrative roles. If you have none, please state the reason you'd be interested in such a role.
- Why you are specifically interested in working with Seeking Alpha (no more than 2 paragraphs)?
- Your resume in English.
- References from prior relevant positions, including phone numbers.

Please note that we'll only be able to respond to relevant applicants.

What Obama Can Learn from the NFL and NBA about Salary Caps and Driving Innovation

2009-10-20T19:09:00.002+02:00

For almost a year now, Washington has been abuzz about compensation caps for Wall Street executives. I can give a long litany of reasons why I think that is a bad idea that creates disincentives for recruiting great people to run these companies at their greatest time of need. As I have written in the past, America (and my home country of Israel for that matter) needs to invest in innovation. Interestingly, salary caps may be a way to spur brainpower into innovation. However, it is an inversion of the populist approach to salary caps currently in vogue.

President Obama's administration could learn a lot about salary caps from the NBA and NFL and in the process can help America turn on the innovation engine that America really needs to climb out of this deep recession. You see, the place to enforce Wall Street salary caps is not on executives but on fresh college grads and MBAs like the NFL does on rookies. This helps spread the talent wealth in the NFL and NBA in a way that it is not currently allocated in American industry.

The fat paychecks that Wall Street was and is able to pay the best and the brightest college grads from MBAs, to mathematics majors and engineers has pushed that brainpower from technological, business and medical innovation to financial engineering. Analyst salaries at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are able to attract the best and the brightest away from pursuing engineering or energy jobs where the brainpower could develop alternative energy sources, more sustainable agriculture and faster telecommunications and not just the next complex derivative. Imagine if all of Americas best brains and management talent were focused on innovation and not financial engineering or lawyering.

The best way to do this is an investment of resources and disincentives to shift brainpower into productivity and ingenuity. The stick is an NBA-style salary cap for rookies so they do not get into the financial system coupled with an investment in PhD and post doc research grants. If ingenuity jobs will pay better than financial engineering it is obvious that most bright grads would prefer innovation over all-nighters preparing boring pitch books and number crunching for bankers.

It is not Jerry Maguire-esque but it is a good way to stack the incentive system to focus on innovation.

An Open Letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu About Forcing Hard Decisions

2009-10-01T10:51:00.003+02:00

Dear Mr. Prime Minister,

Shana Tova. First, I would like to commend you on your superb speech at the United Nations. In general, you have done a good job running our country in your first 6+ months from the 2 year budget to the stable coalition. You have jumped on the swine flu threat with alacrity and put Iran on firm notice. You have steadfastly stood up to President Obama's demands on settlements and correctly pointed out that we should make our own decisions and not be forced by a US President. Congratulations.

Therefore, I was struck by your recent decision to ask for a 2 billion NIS reduction in all the current government ministries to finance the swine flu vaccines and secret military needs. I do not object to the budget cut. I think that is called fiscal responsibility which is in short supply in the world today. What I object to is the broad cut. A 2% reduction in spending across all ministries is running away from tough decisions and tough politics.

On a smaller scale, but very similarly, board members at start ups force budget cuts in tough times. However, we do not turn to the CEO and say cut 10% in R&D, Sales and Marketing and GA. We look at where we can afford to cut and where we need to invest and make deeper cuts in some and no cuts in others. No everyone is happy but that is what needs to be done and that is what you need to do.

We cannot cut any more in education. We need to invest more there. Gideon Saar is right. We cannot cut more in infrastructure spending, job retraining or R&D spending because we will not be competitive globally. We need to invest in creating jobs because unemployment erodes societal solidarity and I do not see your ministries working hard to create these jobs yet. We cannot cut police spending because the crime here is intolerbale. So we, no you, need to make hard decisions that will be unpopular with some of your colaition partners.

We do not have money for subsidies for people who choose not to work, nor for the child allowances you reinstated. I wish we did. But we do not. People need to have families that they can afford to pay for. That is very Jewish. I am a big fan of an increased Jewish birthrate and believe everyone should have more children but the government does not have money to pay for that. We do not have money for more bypass roads in Yehuda and Shomron. The Smol Haleumi is right on this point. It hurts, but we do not have the money. Communities need to start paying for religious services like communities in the diaspora do. Sorry Minister Margi. The government does not have money for it. By the way, what does not Science Ministry that Minister Hershkowitz runs do anyway?

We need hard decisions. We need deep cuts in some ministries and services and no cuts in others. We need your proposed investment in railroads. We need a deep investment in broadband infrastructure and we needa huge investment in education and defense. We need to prioritize. We need to ask the question of one more F15 vs. 1000 more teachers. We need to ask the question of one more road in Yehuda and Shomron vs. smaller classrooms and a national railroad system. We need to talk about this clearly and not waver or hide behind broad cuts. It is time for hard decisions. Recessions tend to force this focus. Let's use it.

Thanks for listening and Chag Sameach
Michael

Good Thing Jeter and Mariano aren't Jewish

2009-09-02T09:48:00.001+03:00

Major League Baseball and ESPN <http://www.nypost.com/topics/topic.php?t=ESPN> must be atone deaf.
The Yankees' Sept. 27 home game against the Boston Red Sox <http://www.nypost.com/topics/topic.php?t=Boston_Red%20Sox> has been rescheduled from 1 to 8 p.m. -- putting the first pitch well after the sundown start of Yom Kippur.
The move forces observant Jewish fans to miss the game or risk having a lot more to atone for next Yom Kippur.
"Baseball switched the time because ESPN selected the game," a spokeswoman for the Yankees told The Post. "We were upset by it, but we have no control."

(hat tip: Brother Noam and NYPOST)

Derek Jeter and the Real Time Web

2009-08-18T10:34:00.003+03:00

There I was sitting in my office in Herzliya Israel this morning. Somebody told me that Michael Arrington posted and interesting link on Facebook so I went to check my News Feed first thing when I arrived. As I logged in I saw that 2 minutes earlier my good friend and ePinions (shopping.com) founder Nirav Tolia updated that he was sitting next to Derek Jeter and other of my beloved Yankees in the lobby of the St. Regis in San Francisco. In realtime, from my desk in Israel I asked him to go over and get my kids an autograph. See below for full conversation. Incredible use of the real time web!

PS: Nirav Updates me that the fearless @sarahleary (who is a Red Sox fan) actually asked Jete for the autograph. Thanks Sarah!

Stanley Fisher is Doing an Incredible Job Managing the Shekel/Dollar Exchange Rate

2009-08-10T16:18:00.003+03:00

My headline above says it all. Governor of the Bank of Israel, Stanley Fischer, who directed Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's PhD thesis, is showing the world that central bank governors have a thing or two to learn from the silver-haired Fisher.

He has handled this crisis with both a steady hand and a wily strategy, in which he has kept speculative traders guessing. As I have written many times before, among the biggest risks to Israel's economy is the Shekel/Dollar exchange rate. I do not believe it is an objective problem. It is, however, a planning problem. When most businesses are budgeting for an exchange rate of 4:1 and the dollar weakens to much below that, both employment and exports are hurt in this export-dependent economy.

As the market keeps pushing the dollar down, Fisher has

propped it up through steady currency purchases. That gave confidence to exporters and businesses. When the shekel started rallying, Fisher announced that he would make some intermittent large purchases of dollars to prop up the dollar. Just that announcement sent the shekel down against the dollar and caused some speculators to panic. Today, Fisher announced that he would stop the daily purchases of $100MM dollars. In about one second, the Shekel rose against the dollar over 2%.

Fisher is keeping the speculators guessing so that they do not exaggerate the fall and ris

e in the exchange rate. At the end of the day, Fisher clearly understands that the market forces will prevail in the end. He is getting Israeli businesses used to a weaker dollar in stages so they can plan appropriately and delivering a stern message to currency speculators that they bet heavily on the shekel/dollar trade at their own risk.

Really Interesting Presentation on iPhone Penetration

2009-08-02T15:32:00.002+03:00

The below presentation is unbelievable (Hat Tip Jan Schultink). Truth is, we have seen the power of Apple at Tunewiki, (Benchmark company) who saw 3+X growth in 30 days from the moment it launched on the Appstore. This is pretty useful to keep in mind as the FCC investigates AAPL.

As I look at this market unfold, I cannot help but wonder if this will be a redux of the PC market where Apple innovated and led as long as the systems were vertically integrated (remember the great Apple II and the early Macintosh) but then were soundly beaten when the industry moved to open systems (if that is what Microsoft's Windows Monopoly can be called). So far, cell phones or Mobile Internet Devices (remeber WinTel?) are in the early stages of market development so vertical integration of the hardware, software and applications (read Appstore) is a winning strategy. It will be interesting to see what happens as this market begins to mature, hardware standardization sets in and more manufacturers get up to speed on the handset game and an "windows-like" OS emerges for the cell phone.

I am sure this is what Google is betting on with Android.

Kleiner Perkins iFund Presentation at iPhoneDevCamp 3

View more documents from Raven Zachary.

Mazal Tov - New FaceBook Times

2009-08-02T14:57:00.002+03:00

With much gratitude to השם, Yaffa and I (actually, Yaffa did all the work) gave birth to a baby girl on Shabbat morning at 8:50AM. Mother and daughter are doing well, thank God.

All peanut gallery comments on the blog's name or suggestions for a new name are welcome in the comments section. The blog is now officially on a short paternity leave. Most of you left them on the post the last time I had a baby.

As a sign of the times, the last time we had a baby i posted first to the blog. This time, to twitter and Facebook (pictures there)

In any form, may we all share many simchas and happy occasions

Every Entrepreneur Should Watch This Jeff Bezos Video

2009-07-23T08:41:00.002+03:00

Bezos is incredible. It is no wonder Amazon is so successful. If you are an entrepreneur, watch and learn. This is the ABCs of entrepreneurship and building a great company. (Video is from yesterday on occasion of Amazon buying Zappos)

Tunewiki is now Being Featured in the iPhone Appstore

2009-07-22T11:31:00.003+03:00

Tunewiki (full disclosure: Benchmark company) is now being featured in the iPhone Appstore and is rising through the ranks of free music apps. It is currently #4. You can get the Tunewiki app here.

Elie Wiesel on Rashi

2009-07-20T10:28:00.002+03:00

This is a great 2 minute video from famous author, ethicist and Jewish Hero Elie Wiesel on Rashi, the greatest exegete of the last 1000 years. It is part of the publication of Wiesel's book on Rashi from Nextbook press.

Rashi by Elie Wiesel from Tablet Magazine on Vimeo.

Tunewiki Breaks Into Top 10 Free iPhone Music Apps on Day 1

2009-07-13T23:12:00.005+03:00

Congrats again to Rani, Amnon, Chad, Jared and team Tunewiki for an amazing iPhone app launch. Just days after taking the #1 overall spot in Blackberry's Appworld in the first week since launch of their Blackberry app, Tunewiki launched its iPhone app and on day 1 of launch Tunewiki has broken into the top 10 free music apps on iPhone (see screenshot below). Tunewiki is also getting quite the buzz and positive response on Twitter Search. Here is the Gizmodo review from today. Go team (Full Disclosure:Tunewiki is a Benchmark investment)!

Tunewiki Is the #1 App in Blackberry AppWorld

2009-07-12T08:15:00.009+03:00

Kudos to portfolio company Tunewiki (Rani, Amnon, Chad, Jared and Team) who reached #1 on the Blackberry Appworld chart yesterday.

Tunewiki is really one of the best examples I have run into of the realtime, ubiquitous web.

You can check out the website, with its Geography-filtered REAL-TIME music maps and top 50 charts as well as the addictive REALTIME feed of who is listening to what, where and on what device (see screen shot below)! The instant translation of LEGAL music lyrics is a big hit internationally and the fact that you can access the same experience in multiple places, mobile, web and Twitter (check out the people tweeting out what they are listening to) is what makes it ubiquitous.

If you are a music lover, eager to discover music and watch the trends and learn lyrics, you have to try Tunewiki. If you have a blackberry or an Android phone, you can download the app. Hopefully it will soon arrive in the iPhone Appstore. In the meantime, Windows Media Player users can also get the app for their PC.

For more reviews on various tunewiki apps, check out these

Gizmodo on Tunwiki for Android

Cnet Reviews on Tunewiki App + Streaming Radio

Crackberry on Tunewiki for Blackberry

Blog coverage of Tunewiki

While on the topic of music sites and apps, I see that SAI is reporting the Greylock's David Sze led a $35MM round for Pandora after they got their royalty agreement straightened out.

Michael Jackson Killed the Iranian Revolution

2009-07-06T02:55:00.002+03:00

For over a week the people of Iran captured the imagination of the world, tweeting, youtube-ing and texting their way to international support. Despite the best efforts of the Mullahs, Ayatolla Khameni and "President" Ahmandinejad, who cut the internet lines and jammed cell phone, the green people revolution marched on. The Iranian oppressors were on the run, or so it seemed, even though western leaders such as President Obama, did little to support the Iranian people. Civilians around the world set up proxy servers, retweeted information from Iran, and spread YouTube videos of Neda and others. in fact #iranelection and other variants of it, occupied the top 3-4 spots in the Twitter top 10 for over a week.

That was, until Michael Jackson died. The 50 year old Pedophile, with the plastic face and unauthentic hair knocked the real people of Iran off the top 4 spots on twitter within hours of his death. Instead of retweeting the heroism of the people of Iran, they were speculating on the reasons for Jackson's "untimely" death. His death propelled his songs to the top of the download charts and and moved Neda's death down the charts. The Pedophile overtook the student revolution and the world's attention to the events in Iran waned. 1.6 million people signed up for the Michael Jackson memorial at the Staples Center tomorrow but only a small fraction of that number turned up to support rallies for the Iranian people. The contrast and the irony is too great. Even today, Michael Jackson is in spot #4 and #iranelection is number 8. The people of the world have lost interest in Iran and Jackson continues to grab headlines.

We have a problem. If our attention and that of the news media can be swayed from earth shattering events and real people, fighting real oppression with the ease that Michael Jackson swayed it, we have a problem. If we are riveted by a miscreant pedophile, who lived extravagantly and ran away from reality, then we have lost our moral compass. Twitter is a pretty accurate reflection of what people are thinking and CNN is a reflection of what media people are thinking. Jackson is ahead of Iran on Twitter and the top story on CNN today was Jackson's memorial. We have a problem.

Do We Really Make Our Own Decisions?

2009-06-25T10:21:00.003+03:00

Koby at Seeking Alpha forwarded me this fascinating video of Dan Ariely's talk at the TED conference this year. I highly recommend watching it.

Tel Aviv Stock Exchange

2009-06-24T17:06:00.004+03:00

Esther Levanon, CEO of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, gave the below interview on CNBC this morning. A few comments:

1. If Israel wants to attract serious foreign investment and liquidity to the TASE, it needs to get the liquidity up in the big companies and that means loosening the grip of the "Tycoons" on the big companies. We need a carrot approach that gives tax relief to tightly controlled companies to sell their stock to the public. This would also help retire a lot of the debt they have on the books.

2. Getting more liquidity on the TASE and the deal with the NYSE could possibly help Israel's tech companies raise later stage funding for which there is a severe shortage in Israel. We need local liquidity options to jump start that funding base.

3. While Mrs. Levanon has done a much better job than any of her predecessors in getting the word out on Israeli financial markets and in expanding their global reach (I have now seen her twice on CNBC and interviews in the written press), we need to get her some help and training in English. Like many Israeli spokesman from the Foreign Ministry down, Press training and English Language skills are sorely lacking.

You can see some of my stocktalks and posts on Israeli companies on my page on Seeking Alpha

Kiteboarding VCs and Entrepreneurs

2009-06-02T12:07:00.006+03:00

Here is a shout out to my partner Arad, and CEO of Tunewiki Rani Cohen, Kitesurfers extraordinaire and great partners!

**Update - My Partner Arad sent over two pictures of himself KiteBoarding!

*** Update 2 - Dave Yovanno, CEO of Gigya, Sent over a video and picture of Himself Kiteboarding nearly horizontal with a big wake and Rani Cohen, CEO of Tunewiki, sent one of himself airborne.

Dave Y. Emma Wood Kiteboarding from 1wave on Vimeo.

Stanley Fisher's Dollar/Shekel Dilemma

2009-06-02T08:30:00.001+03:00

As the Dollar weakened over the last 2 weeks against the Israeli Shekel, per my prediction, Governor of the Bank of Israel Stanley Fisher is up against a difficult dilemma. Fisher managed to lower the value of the shekel by dropping interest rates and buying up dollars on the open market. But he is running out of choices because interest rates are already very low and I do not think he wants to get stuck holding a currency (Dollar) that is rapidly devaluing due to US inflation fears. The Chinese are facing this dilemma NOW. Printing shekels like the US has done to the dollar is also not an option because the tiny Israeli economy cannot bear 80's style inflation.

As an export economy, Israel depends on its goods andservices being competitive in quality and price in other markets, especially the USA. Furthermore, in tech land, Israeli R&D struggles to be cost-competitive in global markets when the shekel/dollar exchange rate drops much below 4:1 (see chart below). I don't have any bright ideas for Governor Fisher but I do have some suggestions for start ups and Israeli traded public companies. Some of these are rehashed:

1. Plan your budget conservatively. Project a 3.5:1 Shekel:Dollar exchange rate for the rest of the year.
2. If you are a start up or a public company then convert dollars to shekels to cover at least 12 months of shekel-denominated operation costs. There is no reason for you to take currency risk and I imagine that most of you are budgeted at somewhere less than 4:1 which is roughly where the exchange rate is now as it heads south.
3. If you are in investor in an public Israeli company with large shekel exposure (full disclosure: I am invested in Publicly traded MAIL and Babylon) then see what that company's currency hedging policies are.
4. Already create a plan on how you make more with less. As your R&D budget increases in dollar terms, you may be forced to trim staff.

5. Target some non-US markets with your goods on services. This is a good time to be targeting China and India if you can. Those revenues will be more valuable in Shekel terms over the next period of US inflation.

6. Think about putting at least some of your cash reserves in TIPS, which are inflation protected.

None of these are a panacea. The US is still Israel's biggest trading partner and is still the default market for venture backed start ups. But I hope these suggestions will make some of the pain a bit easier.

More reading on inflation here and here and here @seekingalpha

My previous posts on Dollar/shekel are here (1/08), here (9/08), here and here.

Watch Lebron and Superman Tonight With ALL of Your Friends!

2009-05-20T10:47:00.005+03:00

For a long time I have been arguing that the social network is an unnatural place to connect with your friends. In real life, i have different friends in different contextual settings. There are Synagogue friends (no chatting there), Baseball buddies, Political colleagues, Poker buddies (not mine) etc. Today the social world though has much duplication and is a blunt tool. I use Linkedin for business, Twitter (full disclosure: Benchmark company) for link sharing and Facebook for more casual friends but there is a lot of overlap and no context except my status update. What we have always needed is to bring the appropriate friends from all of these social networks to a context.

Facebook Connect was the first step in that direction, enabling my Facebook friends to be with me on Techcrunch, at the Obama inauguration or at one of the other 5000 sites FB connect supports. But I have colleagues and friends on other social nets. Tonight Gigya (full disclosure: Benchmark Company) and Turner are letting you watch the NBA conference championship with all of your friends and all Basketball fans across the world who are not yet on your social net but are guys you would high 5 with at the game or the bar (screen shot below).

Alongside the live video feed of Lebron vs. Dwight Howard, you can invite friends who are in your Facebook AND Myspace AND Twitter networks plus join the chat with thousands of basketball fans world wide and watch it together. You can virtually high-5 and discuss the game with all of those friends and fans. Dwight Howard makes a spectacular block, you can ooh, aah and thump and be heard outside your living room. Want to trade coaching advice whether Orlando should foul Lebron on a last second 3-point shot attempt. Share it and go on the record. You will get feedback in real time.

So have fun sharing a virtual Bud, High-5, and coaching from your couch with an audience. Watch the game online with your all of your basketball buddies. Watching live sports will never be the same again!

If you want to start inviting friends to the game, click here!

Is the Israel Policy Forum Really Pro-Israel?

2009-05-17T10:23:00.004+03:00

Our good family friend Morton Landowne penned the following letter to the Israel Policy Forum Executive Director Nick Bunzl in response to the IPF's ad in the New York Times. Judge for yourself (a copy of the ad is below and the full size ad is in the previous link). I will add one comment to the ad. "Yes you can" and "Yes you should" are two vastly different comments.

Dear Mr. Bunzl:

I am writing to express my disgust with your “pro-Israel” organization’s $60,000+ gift to the depleted coffers of the New York Times that I encountered on Page A13 of this morning’s edition.

First of all, I find the omission of any reference to the newly, and democratically, elected Prime Minister of the State of Israel, to be a calculated insult. No, you will point out, this advertisement was intended to address Mr. Obama’s meetings with all “leaders from the region this month.” However, the implication I draw from the ad is that Mr. Obama’s “determination to achieve progress” is based on “implementation without delay” and that Israel shares some of the blame for that situation.

Secondly, I am incredulous that your message ignores the most important threat facing that region: the creation of a nuclear-armed Iran. If you are “pro-Israel,” wouldn't you think to urge Mr. Obama to treat that scenario with the seriousness with which Israel views it?

A few more questions: Why do you accept as fact that the legal demolition of illegally built houses in Jerusalem is an impediment to a resolution of the “Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?” How dare you, a “pro-Israel organization” accept as fact that Israel has created “superfluous checkpoints and unnecessary roadblocks?” What is the basis of that information? A press release from Khaleed Mashall? Why must the Gaza Strip be “reconstructed” if the conditions that led to its destruction have not been ameliorated? Why must the “Arab Peace Initiative” be embraced if there has not yet been clarification that it will include a renunciation of the “Right of Return?”

To me, your statement “We Support You, Mr. President,” is a blanket endorsement of unilateral pressure on the sovereign state of Israel. If you are truly “pro-Israel” then you must know that no government of Israel could long survive if it ignored true gestures leading to peace. It was Menachem Begin who invited Anwar Sadat to Israel and negotiated the most successful peace treaty in Israel’s history. It was Ariel Sharon who evacuated Gaza. Why do you preemptively insult Prime Minister Netanyahu by stating in a full page ad in the New York Times that the President of the United States has to “insist” on steps that would pressure Israel? No pressure, whatsoever, would be necessary, if Mr. Obama were able to offer Israel a true peace from its neighbors: recognition as a Jewish State, secure borders, and monetary compensation for all those truly displaced by the U.N. Partition.

If the Israel Policy Forum is in fact “an American pro-Israel organization which supports sustained United States leadership to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” then you will give the duly elected government of Israel the benefit of the doubt and urge Mr. Obama to give Israel the assurances it needs to let down its guard. Nothing else is necessary.

Yours truly,

Morton Landowne

Big Opportunity In Entire Wireless Web in my Pocket

2009-05-12T08:28:00.004+03:00

I can't help but escape the following futuristic prediction, you will carry your personal version of the web in your pocket. Let me unpack that sentence:

Carry - on your mobile phone

Personal - Because you will not need the whole web and won't have room to store it all and you only need what YOU want.

Web - Because that is what you want from your phone

In Your Pocket - Because it won't be able to get to the device over the air.

This WSJ Article entitled Demands on Network are an iPhone Hangup gets it right. The laws of physics won't allow wireless bandwidth hogs to be carried synchronously (or asynchronously) over the air, especially not at peak times. This will force networks to build ever-more capacity and it still will not solve the problem. However, there is a solution.

Storage capacity is still increasing at a rapid rate (way faster than bandwidth) and its footprint is shrinking. A terabyte of storage in your home can be less than $100! And today you can already pack 32GB+ on your mobile phone. We are not far from the day where you will be able to get a terabyte of storage in your mobile phone. It is much cheaper to build in storage than it is to build cell towers, even without the physics problem.

What we need is software for that phone that downloads your personal web to your phone and lets you browse it locally. It needs algorithms that are smart enough to know your browsing habits and caching mechanisms to keep it updated. If you need to download the delta because you decided you need something new, that is no big deal. It also needs to do something uniquely mobile which is pre-cache on the phone relevant local data, since much mobile web use is for local information.

That is the future: Your music library, your email and YOUR WEB in your pocket. We just need the software to get us there. Drop me an email if you have figured it out.

Incredimail Earnings

2009-05-04T18:33:00.002+03:00

Ofer Adler and team just put up a great quarter. I posted on Incredimail's Q1 results on Seeking Alpha. So if you want to read it you need to hop over there.

Status Update

2009-05-04T05:02:00.001+03:00

I am testing a new status update widget powered by Gigya Socialize (Full disclosure: Gigya is a Benchmark company) on the right side of the blog. Feel free to try it out and tell me what you think.

My 4 Year Old Exposes A Design Flaw in Children's Underwear

2009-04-23T12:16:00.004+03:00

I still remember the launch of Underoos when I was a kid. It was the ultimate answer to taking your cartoon characters with you wherever you went. I still recall the TV commercial jingle "Underoos are fun to wear, they're the latest thing in underwear." I do not remember, how many, if any pairs my mother bought us as kids but my perspective on them now as a parent of a 4 year old is definitely different than my love of painted underwear then.

You see, underwear covered with cartoon characters and other scenes have a design flaw that my 4 year old has exposed. The crotch (at least on the male version) interferes with the cartoon scene on the front of his underwear. The stitching and folds in the underwear make for a very poor entertainment experience on the front side of the underwear if you want to follow your favorite cartoon character (please see front an back side-by-side comparison) in picture below.

This design flaw is not lost on my four year old. He wants his Bob the Builder and Buzz Light Year entertainment in full glory. So, he has resorted to putting on his underwear backwards. Yup, he tells us that he wants to see the Big Scene of Bob or Buzz so the right way to put on his underwear is backwards. I do not need to delve into some of the problems caused when males put their underwear on backwards but suffice it to say that the urinal experience is not perfect.

However, a solution may be in sight. You see, yesterday, my 4 year old put on an article of clothing backwards because he liked the picture in the front. When my wife told him that he could not wear the shirt backwards out of the house, he strode forward, held out the clothing tag and said "Mommy, please cut off the tag! Now it's not backwards."